This gorgeous wedding portrait/styled shoot comes to us from Crystal Stokes Photography based in Gastonia, North Carolina! Read on to learn the unique true story behind this stunning shoot, as told by the lovely bride:

My (now) husband and I got engaged March 9th, 2013. The day was the most beautiful day. Remembering that day and the days that surrounded it, it was the first warm day we had in North Carolina! We went out that day to look for furniture for our foyer. We purchased our first home and decided to furnish it one room at a time. After we went shopping, we went to a local restaurant. We enjoyed each other’s company. After eating, we decided we wanted to have a fire in our fire pit and grill out for dinner later that night. Corey was really excited to start that particular fire, but it wasn’t out of the ordinary because he is a very outdoors-y kind of man. I didn’t think anything of it. After he got the fire started, he came running in begging for me to come take a look. “It’s the most awesome fire we’ve had out here”, he said. I went outside and there he was, down on one knee. He went into a whole speech about why he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Obviously, I said yes, we called all our relatives and told them the news and celebrated the rest of the night by the fire!

See more after the cut!

After getting our engagement photos done, I was inspired to set a date, find a dress, and find a venue. My parents live in Virginia and Corey’s parents lived in New Hampshire and Massachusetts at the time, so it was difficult to get people here for us to shop for dresses and venues. Corey and I mostly went to look at venues on our own. My mom did come down to NC to help me dress shop the last weekend in June. I made an appointment at Hayden Olivia Bridal in Charlotte, NC and we ended up finding the perfect dress and purchased it the same day! I was SUPER excited. Things were coming together. We also narrowed the venue search to two and were deciding on a weekend my parents could come down to check them out before signing a contract. We set our date based on what Crystal and the two venues had available. Little did we know, something bigger was in store for us….

In August, 2013 Corey and I found out we were expecting. Talk about throwing us for a loop. We debated for months on whether we should still go forward with a wedding, since we set our date for September 2014, it still gave me plenty of time to plan the wedding, have our son, and have 6 months to get ready for our day after having him! I didn’t want to regret not having a wedding 30 years down the road, and Corey wanted me to be happy. In the end, we decided to just elope before our son was born, and have a reception on the set date. That was the plan up until about 2 months before our set date of September 27th 2014. After having our son, we realized that we had everything we could ever need. I didn’t need a big day to document or define our love for each other. We did, however, want to document the special time in our lives, so we decided to keep crystal (duh, who wouldn’t) and do a photo shoot. Plus, I already purchased my dreamy dress, and I didn’t want that to go to waste!

Crystal enlisted the help of Deedie Springer with Springvine Desgin, and Mandy Boedicker with Dry Ink Desgins to help us put together our magical day. She also helped me book Deanna Christine with Adorned Studio for hair and makeup. I talked my mom into letting us use some of her furniture, china, tablecloths, and place settings to use in our shoot. My mom is a collector of things, so she had PLENTY for us to use. All and all, our day was everything we could have ever imagined. With everything that has gone on in the last year, it was wonderful to have our day as a family. We will never forget our day, and are so happy to have photos to show Lawson when he gets older. We can’t wait to show him how happy and in love we were, even if it was a non-traditional way to do a wedding!

Congratulations Holly & Corey and thank you Crystal for sharing! For more information about Crystal Stokes Photography, please visit her website.

What do you think of this styled shoot? Let us know in the comments below!